Chapter 1

Changing what happens in schools:

central-level initiatives to improve^. ~- _^
school practice -V^ï--^lf°'%*¿?
'J/
David W . Chapman
Academy for Educational Developments
Washington D . C . , U S A
Lars O . Mählck -</,, - — - - ,. \
International Institute for Educational Planning, "--^iJ^>-^
Paris

While m a n y countries are expressing a renewed commitment

to improving the quality of their education system, the m o v e from
commitment to action has been harder than expected. The education
systems of most countries are highly centralized and major decisions
on h o w quality should be improved are often m a d e m a n y levels
away from the classroom, where the real process of education occurs.
What can ministries of education do to influence and support
improved practice at the school and classroom levels?
This v o l u m e examines strategies that have been widely
advocated as ways that central and regional education ministries
can influence education practice at the school-level. This is
accomplished through a series of case studies of national efforts to
implement those strategies. These case studies identify the types of
cross impacts, unintended consequences (both positive and
negative), and practical problems of implementation that provide
the basis for assessing the potential of these strategies to actually
influence classroom practice. Second, the book examines what
kinds of information planners, administrators and teachers need and
h o w the communication of information should be organized to
successfully undertake these actions. Information and communica-
tion have emerged as the n e w currency of development. Too often,
however, in the zeal to improve the information base needed for
planning and programme implementation, countries have created a
state of infoglut, with educational planners strangled by more
information than can be meaningfully analyzed or used, yet still
without the essential information they need to m a k e the types of
decisions called for.

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From planning to action

Audience

This book is intended for policy-makers, educational planners,

and administrators concerned with h o w central-level policies and
system-level reforms can be designed and implemented in w a y s
that can influence practice at the school and classroom level. It is
also intended for development specialists, especially those in
international assistance agencies, w h o share responsibility for
advocating and funding educational reforms. A s international
development assistance comes under increasing scrutiny, it is
essential that those responsible for targeting investments in education
have a current and accurate understanding, not just of what strategies
work, but of why they work. Finally, this book will be of use to
m a n a g e m e n t information specialists seeking to understand the
information d e m a n d s and communications associated with
educational reform in developing country settings.
This book will also be useful in training programmes aimed at
education and government leaders, particularly in developing country
settings, w h o are searching for w a y s in which ministry-level
interventions can m a k e a meaningful difference at the school and
classroom levels. T h e impact of ministry-level policy on teacher
practice has often been cloaked in wishful thinking and selective
ignoring of the loose linkage between what decision-makers and
system planners formulate as policy, h o w that policy gets translated
into programmes, and what teachers and children actually do in the
classroom.
This volume is designed to stand alone as a resource book that
synthesizes the lessons of recent experience in enhancing the quality
of education through national initiatives. However, it grows out of
and extends earlier work, reported in Data to action: information
systems in educational planning (Chapman and Mählck, Editors,
Pergamon, 1993), which examined h o w improved information about
the education system could be used in planning for improved quality
of education, and which drew on case studies from Africa and Latin
America.

Sponsorship

This volume is jointly sponsored by the International Institute

for Educational Planning (HEP) in Paris, and the Advancing Basic
Education and Literacy ( A B E L ) project funded by the United States
Agency for International Development ( U S A I D ) . A B E L is a 10
year project (1989-1999) to assist governments in planning, policy
research, and implementation of interventions to improve access,
quality, and efficiency of education. The project is operated by a

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 Changing what happens in schools: central-level
initiatives to improve school practice

consortium of 15 international development organizations led by

the A c a d e m y for Educational Development in Washington D . C .
H E P , established in 1963 in Paris by U N E S C O , promotes
training and research on educational planning in relation to economic
and social development. The IIEP's Annual Training P r o g r a m m e
in Educational Planning and Administration, offered at its Paris
headquarters, is attended by planners from Africa, Asia and the
Pacific, Arab states, Latin America and the Carribean, Europe and
North America. T h e Institute also conducts a variety of training
courses, seminars and workshops at regional and national locations
throughout the year. A s part of its continuing commitment to provide
relevant, timely and appropriate training, IIEP regularly undertakes
studies to identify and investigate emerging issues in educational
development, planning, and management. The collaboration of IIEP
in the present project reflects this commitment and its recognition
that the improved use of information in planning is a major issue in
the continued development of education in m a n y of its M e m b e r
States.

Distribution of responsibilities across levels of an education

system

In centralized education systems, m a n y of the major decisions

that frame the intended changes in learning conditions and
instructional practices are traditionally in the realm of those operating
at the national level. For example, establishing policy objectives,
developing curriculum, selecting textbooks, allocating personnel,
and formulating budgets are generally central-level functions. In
the typical reform process, policies and programmes are designed
at the top of the system and then, through various central regulations
and guidelines, are implemented by schools, teachers and other local
officials. However, this pattern is changing and a redistribution of
responsibilities is under w a y , in the belief that it can enhance
educational quality.
In an extreme reaction to 'over-centralization' (or perception
of over-centralization) s o m e educators have argued that all change
must begin from the bottom and that the central ministry can really
do very little to influence what happens in schools. However, as the
case studies will illustrate, while central education ministries are
increasingly less able to dictate change, they still have a fundamental
role, both in designing reforms and in ensuring that intended changes
actually occur. In Shaeffer's (1994) words, "the centre is neither
omnipotent, nor impotent."
M a n y of the discussions about 'top-down' and 'bottom-up'
approaches to improve education tend to focus too m u c h o n the

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From planning to action

central local-level relationships, at the expense of the functions

carried out b y the provincial, district, and sub-district levels. Their
traditional role as transmitters of rules and regulations downwards
to schools, and of data and reports upwards, n o w tend to give w a y
to other functions such as monitoring, supervision, and support to
schools.
At the school-level, where the implementation of programmes
takes place, the functions of principals and teachers are also
changing. T h e principal is not only managing and stimulating the
'internal life ' of the school, but increasingly plays a critical role in
mobilizing additional resources from the local community and in
involving parents and community members in the work of the school.

I m p e d i m e n t s to ministry influence o n school a n d classroom

practice

A major responsibility of an education ministry is to organize

and guide school practice. That m a y b e harder than it sounds.
Educators at the school-level m a y resist external guidance,
sometimes from a belief that they k n o w what will w o r k in the
classroom better than those at more central levels of the system,
sometimes from a fear that the ideas coming d o w n will have negative
consequences for them personally. In s o m e countries, educators
point out that they do not receive the message about what ministry
planners expect of them — sometimes due to poor ministry school
communications channels, sometimes because the message itself is
indistinct and the meaning unclear. Regardless of the source of the
problem, the impact is the same. Central policies and programmes
often do not get implemented, or are not implemented in the w a y
they were intended. Nonetheless, while impacts m a y be the same,
the ability of a ministry to take corrective action requires a clear
understanding of what constraints are operating. Seven factors are
often cited as causes of the problems ministries have in influencing
school- and classroom-level practice.

• Ministry policies never get communicated to the schools.

Headmasters and teachers do not even realize they are
supposed to be doing something different

Education in m a n y developing countries is a loosely coupled

system, characterized by poorly defined allocation of responsibilities,
a mismatch between the organizational chart and unit activities,
jurisdictional ambiguities, redundant operations across units, slow
or absent co-ordination a m o n g units, and conflicts between units
over control of programmes and resources (Nagel and Snyder, 1989;

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 Changing what happens in schools: central-level
initiatives to improve school practice

Weick, 1976). Ministry officials responsible for formulating policies

and programmes m a y not have any responsibility to ensure that
those policies and p r o g r a m m e s are communicated to school
personnel.

• The policy is communicated to the schools, but in such vague

terms that school personnel do not understand what actions
they are supposed to take. They either implement the policy
incorrectly, in part, or not at all

Consensus is easier to reach w h e n policies are formulated at

higher levels of generality. The ambiguity allows participants to
agree on otherwise controversial issues, since it allows each to
interpret the policy in terms most favourable to his/her o w n position.
Problems of meaning are deferred to the implementation stage, and
often shifted from the policy-makers to the implementors. T h e
absence of shared meaning only emerges w h e n specific choices
and concrete actions define the real intention of a policy or a plan.
Implementation then falters as latent disagreements surface,
disagreements that were glossed over in the policy pronouncement.

• The policies and programmes coming from the ministry are

seen by teachers as inappropriate and out of touch with the
realities of the classroom

Teachers m a y c h o o s e not to i m p l e m e n t policies and

programmes with which they disagree. For example, s o m e teachers
feel that more active student participation in learning (peer work-
groups, student projects, more student questions) undercuts the
teachers' authority in the classroom. Despite the suggestions that
more active student participation can improve student learning, m a n y
teachers refuse to introduce such methods o n any sustained basis.
Similarly, s o m e cluster school programmes have failed because
secondary school headmasters resisted working with primary
teachers in their school cluster.

• The actions expected of teachers to implement new policies

and practices place demands on them that they are unprepared
or unwilling to meet

T h e costs of implementing a n e w initiative do not always fall

on those w h o reap the benefits. Virtually every innovation, especially
in the early stages, makes n e w demands on teachers, requiring them
to learn n e w things, teach in n e w ways, or modify their classroom
practices in ways that require time and energy. T h e 'worklife

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From planning to action

complexity' hypothesis suggests that teachers (like most people)

will tend to resist those innovations that m a k e n e w demands on
their time and energy, especially if responding to those demands
means diverting time and energy from other activities which they
value (such as a second job or time with family).
For example, adoption of a n e w curriculum m a y offer long-
term benefits to the ministry (in terms of higher levels of student
achievement), while having short-term costs to teachers (in requiring
them to spend additional time for class preparation). This cost to
teachers m a y result in their failure to implement the n e w curriculum,
not because the curriculum w a s weak, but because teachers lacked
adequate incentives.

• The means and support for implementing new policies and

practices are inadequate

In m a n y countries, there is a striking mismatch between the

ambitions of an intended reform programme and the means provided
for its implementation. This gap m a y be enormous, and fatal in the
poorest countries, where textbooks and supply materials are lacking
and supervisors and pedagogical advisers rarely get to the schools
due to inadequate transportation. Generally speaking, to implement
n e w p r o g r a m m e s , schools are very dependent o n the g o o d
functioning of complementary institutions such as curriculum
development centres, training colleges, examination systems, etc.
(Shaeffer, 1994).

• The school-level information available at the national level

often does not include information on pedagogical practices
at the classroom level

Existing information systems at a national level generally

emphasize quantitative data, often collected and maintained at
relatively high levels of aggregation. These information systems
can be useful for national administration and planning, but are of
little value in explaining teacher student interactions or monitoring
fundamental changes in classroom dynamics. Improving quality and
efficiency at the classroom and school levels requires information
on h o w classroom conditions and teacher behaviour influence
students' performance.

• Seemingly good policies interact in negative ways

Interventions designed to correct one problem sometimes create

other problems, often more severe than the original one. These

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 Changing what happens in schools: central-level
initiatives to improve school practice

cross-impacts were either not anticipated or were selectively ignored

during planning. Consequently, good educational programmes fail,
not because they were poorly planned or implemented, but because
outside events had unanticipated impacts on the programme. These
unanticipated impacts occur because education managers were not
aware of h o w activities in other areas of the education system affect
the programmes for which they are responsible. O n e (true) example:
T h e Ministry of Education sought to strengthen its management
capacity b y implementing a national education information
management system. School data were collected from virtually all
schools in the country, analyzed, and m a d e available to central-
level educational planners. T h e system worked well and was quite
effective. T w o years later, this data system collapsed. To compensate
for a cut in government allocation to the education sector, the
Ministry of Education implemented school fees at the secondary
level. S o m e schools, also caught in the budget shortfall, diverted a
portion of those fees to cover instructional materials and school
maintenance. In response, the Ministry used the enrolment data
from its n e w information system to ensure that fee payments were
received from each school. Within a year, most schools were either
under-reporting enrolment or not reporting enrolment data at all.
Without data, the system foundered. The decision to collect school
fees had a negative impact on an earlier government effort to improve
its collection and use of data for decision making.

L o o k i n g ahead

This volume is organized in four parts. Part I, consisting of

two chapters, provides an introduction to the book and a summary
of issues addressed in the following chapters. T h e second chapter
offers a framework of the policy formulation process. T h e authors
challenge popular notions of h o w decision-makers must operate
for their ideas and directives tofindexpression in action. This model
provides a backdrop for six case studies presented in Part II. These
case studies examine real-life problems, opportunities, and
accomplishments associated with widely advocated strategies to
improve school- and classroom-level practice, through:

• improved teacher education,

• revision of textbooks,
• the use of national testing,
• the use of multi-grade classrooms,
• increased community participation in school
management, and
• increased community participation in curriculum.

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From planning to action

These case studies are not offered as exemples of h o w such

interventions might be undertaken — not all of these efforts worked
in the w a y they were intended. S o m e did not work at all. Rather,
these case studies document the opportunities, issues, and problems
encountered in ministry efforts to influence school and classroom
practice. Each of the case studies offer important insights to those
w h o seek to improve school-level practice. K e y issues addressed
in these case studies are summarized below.
Part III, consisting of three chapters, focuses on the use of
education information systems to support improved school and
classroom practice. Authors examine the benefits of m o r e
decentralized data collection and analysis, and strategies for sharing
of information across levels of the education system. Finally, Part TV
synthesizes the case studies and issue papers to suggest practical
implications for h o w education ministries, schools, and communities
can work together to improve the instructional experience of students
in classrooms.

Overview of chapters

In Part I, Chapter 2, Robert W . Porter offers a n e w w a y of

thinking about the policy decision-making process. The dominant
approach reflected in the p r o g r a m m e design activities of most
governments and international assistance agencies is the stage model,
in which the policy process is viewed as a set of activities that
occur in a rough sequence of steps. In the stage model, problems
are identified, information collected, solutions proposed, and, after
debate, a course of action is selected, implemented, and the results
are evaluated. Evaluation results typically recycle to the problem
identification stage, and the cycle is repeated. While this policy
process always operates within the context of broader political
processes, public opinion, and resource constraints, the process
follows a fairly regular pattern through these stages.
T w o problems occur with the stage model. First, events seldom
unfold in an orderly fashion and policy formulation seldom follows
this pattern. Second, attention to policy development does not always
carry forward into a continued concern for policy implementation.
For example, international assistance agencies tend to be preoccupied
with policy analysis at the expense of support for policy
implementation. T o o often, national initiatives end u p as policies
without programmes.
Porter offers a 'multiple streams' model which argues that
policy action is the result of the interaction of three factors. First, a
situation must be seen as a problem. Second, plausible potential
solutions must be available to address the problem. Third, areceptive

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 Changing what happens in schools: central-level
initiatives to improve school practice

political climate must exist, that is, someone needs to be committed

to solving the problem. Policy action occurs w h e n these three
streams converge — w h e n a problem is acknowledged, reasonable
solutions are available, and s o m e group embraces a solution and
charts a n e w course of action. Decision making in the stream model
is not seen as sequential or linear but as a dynamic, political process
in which issues can be defined as problems worth addressing at any
time. T h e timing is determined more by the convergence of political
interests, recognition of a problem, and availability of credible
solutions than by reaching a pre-determined point in a planning
sequence. Advocacy groups play an important role in this model as
they help define what issues are regarded as problems, as they
formulate and advocate possible solutions they think should be
considered, and as they lobby decision-makers to view the resolution
of these issues to be in their o w n political self-interest.
Similarly, information plays quite a different role across the
two models of the policy process. In the stage model there are
discrete points w h e n information relevant to the issues associated
with that stage is specifically sought (e.g. design, implementation,
evaluation). T h e stream model operates on an entirely different
premise. Issues can arise at any time. Information is a tool used by
advocacy groups to get an issue defined as a problem and raised to
a level where it will receive attention. Information plays a more
strategic role in the stream model. Rather than waiting for an
appropriate point in the policy deliberation process, advocacy groups
need to infuse the environment with information about what they
define as a problem, h o w the problem might be solved, and w h y
others should see it in their interest to address the problem. Indeed,
advocacy groups push their o w n issues by flooding the environment
with information that highlights w h y their issue is a problem that
should be addressed by policy-makers, what solutions they favour,
and h o w addressing the issue would benefit the decision-makers
themselves. Porter's examination of the policy formulation process
leads us into policy implementation and strategies designed to
improve school practice.

1. Improving school practice through pre-service teacher

education

Pre-service teacher training is the single most widely employed

strategy (by itself or with other strategies) to improve instructional
quality. This c o m e s as n o surprise. O n e of the most widely held
beliefs underlying both national and international educational
development activities is that the most direct and efficient w a y to
improve instructional quality is to improve the content and

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From planning to action

pedagogical expertise of teachers through increased levels of training.

This assumption is controversial, because evidence suggests it m a y
not work that w a y .
O n e problem is that, once trained, graduates frequently d o not
enter teaching. With the skills provided by teacher training, graduates
are qualified for jobs in the private sector or in other government
agencies that pay better than teaching, and typically do not put the
individual at risk of being assigned to a rural location. A second
problem is that, even if teacher training graduates enter teaching, it
is not clear that more training (of the type often provided in pre-
service training programmes) necessarily leads to better teaching or
to improved student achievement ( C h a p m a n and Snyder, 1993).
Research o n factors affecting student achievement has found only
an inconsistent relationship between teachers' length of schooling
and their students' achievement (Fuller, 1987; L o c k h e e d and
Verspoor, 1991). O n e possible reason for this pattern of findings is
that teachers, once trained, are unable to implement their newly
learned behaviours within the school setting, so the potential benefits
are then lost o n the student.
C o m b i n e d with the uncertainty of results is that pre-service
teacher training is an incredibly expensive undertaking. While the
unit cost of teacher training is often greater than for regular secondary
schooling, the real issue is that trained teachers c o m m a n d higher
salaries. Efforts to upgrade large numbers of teachers have dramatic
consequences for the recurrent education budget. In s o m e countries,
two additional years of teacher training can double a teacher's salary.
A teacher with a bachelor's degree might earn three times more.
Given the cost implications, modifying the teacher training
programme within a country is often a highly controversial activity.
It is not surprising, then, that national efforts to upgrade teacher
training can b e c o m e highly politicized.
In Part II, Chapter 3, Beatrice Avalos and Paul Koro trace the
politics associated with national efforts to strengthen teacher
education in Papua N e w Guinea and, within that, h o w information
w a s used within the political process. T o d o that, they examine the
interplay of proposals, actions, tensions, and negotiations that led
to the strengthening of the teacher training colleges in Papua N e w
Guinea, a process they suggest is illustrative of what occurs elsewhere
w h e n major reforms are undertaken.
Over the past decade, a series of national commissions in Papua
N e w Guinea w a s convened to review the status of teacher education
and m a k e recommendations for h o w it might be strengthened. T h e
main recommendations included extending the length of teacher
training (from two to three years), upgrading the training programme
to a diploma course, reducing the number of subjects taught within

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 Changing what happens in schools: central-level
initiatives to improve school practice

the teacher training p r o g r a m m e , a n d increasing the entry

requirements.
Their case study traces h o w different constituent groups —
teachers, the university community, international advisers, Ministry
officials — received and interpreted information from the
Commission reports differently. Those differences in interpretation
linked to larger issues. A t stake w a s control of the National Institute
for Teacher Education. T h e issue w a s whether it w o u l d be
autonomous, controlled by the Ministry of Education, or controlled
by the Commission for Higher Education.
Their case study can be understood within the framework
proposed by Porter in Chapter 2. The Commission reports raised
the need to improve teacher training to the level of a problem to be
addressed. T h e reports also offered a variety of possible solutions.
These reports were then used by advocacy groups — the Association
of Teacher Education, the teachers themselves, and the Ministry of
Education — to get the attention of political decision-makers, thereby
moving teacher education onto the national agenda for debate. T h e
Commission reports helped create the political climate in which
politicians and M O E personnel would take o n the issues.
T h e reports compiled and translated disparate information
regarding the weakness of teaching practice and suggested
alternatives. Avalos and Koro discuss the factors shaping the decision
process, including the quality of the information gathered initially,
the form in which it w a s presented, and the extent to which it w a s
accepted by the educational community. Contributing to the impact
of the reports w a s research evidence substantiating the claims and
the re-emergence of the same findings and conclusions across the
multiple reports. Nonetheless, information from the reports w a s
addressed selectively, with trade-offs along the w a y to accommodate
the political process. A s Avalos and Koro point out, information is
sometimes disregarded w h e n the direction it suggests clashes with
other more powerful institutional agenda. However, Avalos and
Koro conclude that, ultimately, the influence of information on
decision making depends heavily on the quality and commitment
of the people involved on all sides.

2. Improving school practice through textbook revision

Improving the textbooks children use is widely regarded as the

quickest, most direct, and cost-effective m e a n s of improving the
quality of classroom instruction. Textbooks select, sequence, and
pace the presentation of content which then largely defines what
students learn. If textbooks are such an effective w a y of improving
instruction, w h y then d o so m a n y teachers resist adopting n e w
textbooks?

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